What Happens When Hair Follicle Growth Starts to Slow?
Stimulating hair follicle growth is an important part of encouraging new hair growth and making sure established hair stays healthy. As we get older our follicles start to shrink. As follicles contract the all important hair replacement cycle starts to become unbalanced with many more hairs being lost than are replaced. The inevitable result is obvious.
The average person loses between 50 and 100 hairs every day. As long as hair follicle growth keeps up with loss hair remains abundant. But somewhere between the ages of 45 and 55 this balance begins to shift, with more hair being lost than is replaced. If the imbalance is substantial, balding will start to be seen fairly quickly. On the other hand if the imbalance is minute it may take 4 to 8 additional years before balding becomes obvious.
At the root of this imbalance is lack of hair follicle growth with the most common cause being androgenetic alopecia or male or female pattern baldness.
Male pattern baldness is easy to recognize. Some men lose only some hair with an M shaped pattern on top of their head emerging. Others, especially those whose balding began early in life will likely go completely bald on top but retain hair in the back and on the sides. Male pattern baldness is responsible for nine out of every ten cases of progressive balding in men.
For women the news is slightly better. Approximately one out of every four women will experience female pattern baldness. While the basic mechanism is the same, the pattern of balding in women is much different. Female pattern baldness in women is generally seen as a general thinning without the receding hair line some prominent in their male counterparts. There are a couple of reasons for this difference in appearance; first, women have much lower blood levels of androgen hormones, specifically testosterone and second women have a different pattern of hormone receptors and enzymes on the scalp.
Both types of androgenetic alopecia stymie hair follicle growth through a combination of androgen hormone accumulation and heredity.
The most often used treatment to stimulate hair follicle growth is the drug minoxidil. While research has yet to determine exactly how minoxidil works what we do know is that it enlarges shrinking scalp follicles while stimulating hair follicle growth. In plain English it is able to reverse some the damage done to the hair follicles by androgenetic alopecia.
What next? There are currently a handful of and re-growth products (specially formulated for both men and women) which have been proven effective both in blocking harmful hormones and bringing the all important dead hair follicles back to life. These specially formulated treatments can be used both as a preventative tool, starting before hair loss becomes severe, or after loss of hair has become noticeable. Whatever the level of balding or thinning you are experiencing these products could be just what is needed to overcome this latest life challenge.
Rob D. Hawkins is an enthusiastic advocate for the use of natural health products and natural living with over 10 years Article Source:
experience in the field.
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